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The NHS “competes in the open market”, so to speak - you pay taxes to get free healthcare for everyone, then you can get private insurance which picks and choos

The NHS “competes in the open market”, so to speak - you pay taxes to get free healthcare for everyone, then you can get private insurance which picks and chooses what it wants to treat and dumps complex cases back on the NHS. Routine treatment is also dealt with by some combination of the NHS and private pharmacies (for flu jabs etc), generally speaking. Unsurprisingly, private health insurance is not very popular here. It’s mostly just something people get through work. And I’ll remind you that we spend less per capita on our healthcare than the US does. I’m sure that if there was actually demand to meet that spending, private insurance here would happily eat it up - but there just doesn’t seem to be.

conanbatt 8y ago
If you get private health insurance, do you get your NHS contribution back? Thats what would make it "competing" in the open market. If you have to pay for it no matter what, there is no competition, there is double charging.
- vertex-four 8y ago
  There isn’t double charging, because private health insurance universally doesn’t cover the same things as the NHS does, and universally depends on the NHS to work with for anything they think might be too expensive to cover. Given that we spend less money on healthcare than countries that do have healthcare “on the open market” like you suggest, I’d say this is a system that obviously works. If there were an imbalance between what those countries provide and what we provide, and people were willing to pay for it, you’d see private healthcare providers successfully taking more money (up to what Americans spend) to make up the gap in service - but they’re not. Do you have an explanation for why that’s not happening?
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    If there are general practicioners in the private market in the UK, that means their patients pay for the NHS and also for the private GP, thus double charging. Particularly with your primary care provider, continuity is important in medical care, not everything is replaceable like a cog. > Given that we spend less money on healthcare than countries that do have healthcare “on the open market” like you suggest, I’d say this is a system that obviously works. Sorry but this is a ludicrous claim. Argentina spends 2% less of GDP than the UK, and 70% of its care is private. And not only that, it gives free healthcare services to other countries, including organ transplants.

conanbatt 8y ago

If you get private health insurance, do you get your NHS contribution back? Thats what would make it "competing" in the open market. If you have to pay for it no matter what, there is no competition, there is double charging.

vertex-four 8y ago
There isn’t double charging, because private health insurance universally doesn’t cover the same things as the NHS does, and universally depends on the NHS to work with for anything they think might be too expensive to cover. Given that we spend less money on healthcare than countries that do have healthcare “on the open market” like you suggest, I’d say this is a system that obviously works. If there were an imbalance between what those countries provide and what we provide, and people were willing to pay for it, you’d see private healthcare providers successfully taking more money (up to what Americans spend) to make up the gap in service - but they’re not. Do you have an explanation for why that’s not happening?
- conanbatt 8y ago
  If there are general practicioners in the private market in the UK, that means their patients pay for the NHS and also for the private GP, thus double charging. Particularly with your primary care provider, continuity is important in medical care, not everything is replaceable like a cog. > Given that we spend less money on healthcare than countries that do have healthcare “on the open market” like you suggest, I’d say this is a system that obviously works. Sorry but this is a ludicrous claim. Argentina spends 2% less of GDP than the UK, and 70% of its care is private. And not only that, it gives free healthcare services to other countries, including organ transplants.